How one atheist sees life

Pprophesy This!

No matter what holy text you look at, especially the Abrahamic monotheistic texts, none of them prophesy the future that we live in. Not one of them does. If you look at the proclaimed miracles, it can be said that we perform those miracles daily through modern medicine and technology. Why yes, you can walk on water.

We heal the sick like it was no kind of miracle at all. We replace many body parts, resuscitate the dead, clone animals, grow meat in labs, replace hearts (so much for that being the home of your soul). In fact, there are no miracles in the Christian holy text that we have not attempted and only a few which are not possible – like making the sun stand still, though technically it always stands still relative to the earth, so mission accomplished.

The point is that we do what gods were supposed to do to prove their value and existence. Why are we still believing these outlandish miracles as proof of anything?

Not one of those holy texts predicted human flight, whether passenger aircraft or spacecraft. Not one. Not one of them predicted viruses or microbial life. Not one of them predicted electricity. Not one of them predicted our telecommunications systems. Not one of them predicted anything about the world we know today. We could easily conclude that they stopped being useful texts about 1800 years ago – Sorry Islam, you missed the starting gun.

Yeah, that sort of stuff is in the holy texts, right? Lets go up and visit god, shall we? Oh no… another fall from heaven.

Everything we use relies on science, even the damn holy text that they read every day relies on science to be printed now. That church web site? Science. The chemicals to kill the mold in the church basement? Science. Those lightning rods on top of the church? Science.
Gods never did this, nor did they predict human apes would do it.

Felix Baumgartner stepped out of the space capsule an astonishing 128,100 feet, or 24.26 miles above earth, about three times the cruising altitude of jetliners. The skydiver plummeted for 4:20 seconds, but it seemed an eternity, because his faceplate was fogging up on the way down as he fell through harsh atmospheric conditions at a dizzying speed.

Baumgartner was also thrown into a dangerous tumble shortly after exiting. “It felt like a flat spin,” said Baumgartner. “I had a lot of pressure in my head, but I felt I could regain control so we could go after the sound barrier.”
According to Brian Utley, who’s responsible for FIA certification, roughly one minute into his jump Baumgartner reached a top speed of 833.9 mph, a new record for a skydiver. That also means he successfully broke the sound barrier, reaching Mach 1.24.

He also broke the record for the highest manned balloon flight, unofficially reaching a height just shy of 25 miles. He did so in a balloon that’s also the largest ever manned.

The prediction capability of religion is zero. It has no relevance to today’s world, except where it helps us understand the absolutely bat shit crazy shit that believers do. That’s right, the holy texts of every religion are not useful to society unless you need help understanding why someone did some bat shit crazy thing. They are more useful as psychosis diagnosis manuals than anything else.

Humans will continue to outdo the holy texts. Science will continue to explain more and more. Religions will be stuck in their ancient superstitions, for they will never achieve feats such as these, not on their own.

If you are an outed atheist I have a suggestion: Redo this post into the form of a letter and send it to newspapers as a letter to the editor. Those people are the ones we need to convince, that is, if you are into that sort of thing. A fine, and very true post.

First, Muslims are more often those claiming their text is scientifically accurate and predictive, to get that out of the way. Then we have the AiG people who seem to “think that the Flinstones was a documentary”. These attempts to prove the holy texts as scientifically accurate for the purpose of validating all else in them is ludicrous. Certainly some mention of microbes would have been ‘interesting’ or even another law in the old testament – “Wash your hands” would have been good.

I like it when an off the cuff comment starts a conversation. If for no reason other than understanding the language used by religious crackpots, the books are useful in the diagnosis area. They can also explain some of the motivation behind actions by religious nutters. Without the texts, someone unfamiliar with religious dogma and tradition would find it difficult to separate devout faith from delusion or illness. That process for curing leprosy is completely whacked. then there are families who pray their children to death because of those books, or I guess I mean they pray while their children die for lack of common medical treatments. The list goes on.

What kind of psychopath lets their child die for lack of common medical treatment?

If you and I do not find this helpful, the holy text has kept some of these parents off of death row by explaining the delusion that lead the parents to kill their children through inaction.

So, I think that yes, the holy texts have been used in helpful ways for diagnosis – of sorts.

“First, Muslims are more often those claiming their text is scientifically accurate and predictive, to get that out of the way. Then we have the AiG people who seem to “think that the Flinstones was a documentary”. These attempts to prove the holy texts as scientifically accurate for the purpose of validating all else in them is ludicrous.”

I agree. I don’t think the texts of Genesis were intended to be scientific material in the way that we think of textbooks and peer-reviewed journals. Just because they are not written that way doesn’t rule them out as being true; they were written in a different culture and for different purposes. For example, many religions worshipped the sun and the moon as gods. Genesis however just refers to them as the greater light at day time and the lesser light at night (so in terms of phenomenon/function). God’s people would then look up at the sun and moon and are reminded of God’s gracious provision. I think that’s more like how that text was intended to function for the original audience (who did not have access to the same level of scientific knowledge and mathematics that we do)

“Certainly some mention of microbes would have been ‘interesting’ or even another law in the old testament – “Wash your hands” would have been good.”

As I alluded to in my other comment, I agree it would have helped 🙂 There may be some notions of cleanness in the OT though, e.g. wash after handling dead animals because they were considered “unclean”. The laws weren’t just in themselves they pointed to the notion that God’s people should live God’s way. Note the laws etc in the OT were given for a specific people for a specific reason and as part of a covenant between God and those people for that time. He was teaching them ‘this, not that’. Anyway, OT is not my strong suit….

“What kind of psychopath lets their child die for lack of common medical treatment?”

I’m not quite sure what you’re referring to with the leprosy comment. On the above, are you talking about Jehovah’s Witnesses and the no blood transfusion thing because they believe it is eating the blood? Well yeah I think that’s crazy too.

“If you and I do not find this helpful, the holy text has kept some of these parents off of death row by explaining the delusion that lead the parents to kill their children through inaction. So, I think that yes, the holy texts have been used in helpful ways for diagnosis – of sorts.”

How about the ideas that people do bad things because they are corrupted? Do you think there is anything in that?

I have to work now so I’ll get back to you on the other one later tonight.

The idea of original sin is corrupt. This one concept dominates the OT, and that only through submission to god’s will can one be saved from his wrath. Hell is really a concept of the NT. This is why Jews don’t believe in hell, or the rapture which is completely new wave. The idea then that the OT laws were for a given people in a given time does not jibe well with the whole Genesis thing. There is banishment from the garden, the flood, destruction of cities, genocide, laws, ignore the other gods, wars, temple building, temple destruction, ignore the other gods, Romans, kill the Christ (but he wasn’t annointed by the church) and then general destruction/persecution, Constantine, The RCC, and nothing but trouble and strife throughout the whole story. Not exactly the way life should go for god’s chosen people, amirite? I left out slavery and wandering in the desert and other stuff, but you get the picture.

Baically he has a temper tantrum and kicks them out of the garden, then takes pity on those that will submit to him. Except for Job, fuck Job. Who did Cane marry? Was god into incest? Perv! Not only Cane but Lot and his harlot daughters. This stuff isn’t clean enough for a Christian book store.

An omniscient god. I can see it now. He’s putting together the idea for the garden and he already knows that his meddling is going to be the biggest all time source of misogyny ever created. So does he remove the tree? Nooooo, he turns into a snake and gets Eve to grab a snack then pretends he didn’t know what happened. I do not know how anyone can read this stuff and not think the plot is completely screwed. Yeah, go ahead and say it was Satan, but he knew what happened and pretended he didn’t. That’s collusion. Full Stop.

Keep in mind now, microbes and alien species were not important enough to tell us about, but incest? magic? slavery? all this and more was important. This is more Hispanic daytime soap opera than guide for living. All this from a guy who knew I’d be asking for evidence because the story book won’t cut it and yet, no, no evidence. Perhaps he is not all powerful as you imagine him to be. It is just a story.

I do not believe that there was an Adam and Eve (and what about Lilith? She gets such a bad rap). Therefore there is no grace, no original sin, no corruption. We are as we are. Anyone can do good. To do truly evil things all you need is faith in a religion. That might not be fair, but the guide on how to be immoral is in that book, Joshua and Hitler compare favorably. The idea that humans are born corrupt is dependent upon the first book of the Christian Bible. That book… well, you don’t need to leave that first book to find reason to doubt the god of Abraham. The first few chapters introduce us to contradictions and science problems. The garden story shows a lack of omniscience and power. It goes down hill from there. To top that off, the Jesus actually said that he is not come to change the law, but to fulfil it. All of the OT still applies. shhhh Don’t tell Paul, he’d be pissed.

Satan, what a great sub plot that guy is:

“Satan in the Old Testament

Although it is common to find Christians speaking of the universe as a place divided between good and evil forces (God and Satan respectively), this is not the picture of things in the Old Testament. As far as the writers of the Old Testament are concerned, everything that happened was an act of God. When bad things happened to people in the Old Testament, they did not blame a devil but assumed they had upset (or offended) God. When good things happened, it was believed to be because people had pleased/obeyed God. A good example of this can be seen in Deuteronomy 28:1-68, where blessings and curses are set out for obeying and disobeying God.”

I am fairly well convinced that Christians don’t know what they believe. See, the world was kind of just god and humans screwing things up as they went along. God created man, kicked him out of the garden, decided to press the restart button with a flood, picked the wrong people, then tried selectively killing humans to fix things. All along he knew it wouldn’t work… so what was the point? Not until the NT do we get to find out about Hell, Satan/demons as a force for evil in the world, and many other truly corrupt ideas. From start to finish, the christian bible is a bad guide for living. Any good lesson in that book can be more easily sourced from elsewhere and with much less dogma, drama, and delusion.

And that is a synopsis of why I want to see evidence that gods can even exist, never mind if one does or not.